CHANGING MY NAME?!?!
Plus: blog questions! Wow this is a big one, gang
Howdy!
In late January, a blog I like, Shady Characters, published a “miscellany” post that is part of an ongoing trend in the bloggosphere, evocative of the MySpace and Facebook questionnaires which ruled our lives in a simpler time. The questions originated on a platform called Bear, which is a text-based pure blogging platform, and Keith over at Shady Characters makes the strong (and correct!) point that Substack is not actually a blog platform.
However, the questions, which were originally specific to writers on Bear, have morphed as they’ve spread across the internet. Now, all of these questions are pertinent to newsletter-writers (like myself). Plus, answering them gives me an excuse to drop some fun newsletter news! So, keep reading, all will be revealed, etc etc etc.
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I like writing. It sounds simple and it is simple; I like writing, and I’m a good enough writer that several people like my writing. Enough people like my writing, and ask frequently enough to read it, that I thought a blog would be a good idea.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I write on Substack because I have infinite patience for writing, and no patience for learning new user interfaces. For example, that Bear blogging platform I mentioned in my intro is REALLY cool, but it’s also very minimal. According to some of the users whose reviews I’ve read, you can add images, but only if you upload them elsewhere and then enter the HTML embed codes into your post. I’m sure I could learn to do that! But it’s a barrier, for sure, since my weekly Newsletter Writing Time is limited.
Also, throughout my writing career (which includes blogging but also newspapers and magazines), I’ve found that email newsletters are the best way for my readers to reliably, consistently access my work. Were this a plain blog, and not an emailed newsletter, I would probably get two or three texts that said “Heyyyy are you doing a blog this week???” and I would say “Oh yeah duh sorry” and send the link, and then after the fourth time everyone including me would give up.
I am frustrated by my own limitations. I’ve used MailChimp on and off for 12 years—my whole media career!—and I’ve never, ever managed to make a newsletter that looks how I intend it to look. Ann Friedman does her weekly newsletter via MailChimp, and if given 24 hours and an unlimited supply of Red Bull, I would not be able to recreate it. I know my limits and good design is number one.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Oh, yes, big time. I’ve been blogging on and off since 2013 (?????????????????!), when I had a college Blogspot called “Hatt’s the Way It Is.” I abandoned the blog during my second semester, because, as a journalism major, I quickly pivoted to blogging for classes and dayjobs. From 2017 to 2022, I maintained an account on Medium; most of those sporadic posts are now archived. I also had a secret Medium blog in 2019 and 2020, which is tucked away in secret deletionland.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
I am bad, and usually type directly in Substack, where things can get eaten by the Internet. I do keep a document in my Notes App that is called “newsletter ongoing,” and I put notes for the Friday Dispatch in there (so I don’t lose the links to overpriced items for What I Did Not Buy This Week, etc). I’m writing this entry in a Google document, but only because there were prompts I needed to copy/paste.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
2:00 PM and 2:00 AM. I do most of my actual writing from 6 PM to 10 PM on weeknights, or 4 PM to 10 PM on weekends.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I usually hit “submit” right away! There are a couple of exceptions to that—my essay about being diagnosed with asthma, for example, is something I worked on for several days, so I let it “settle” after finishing the first draft. Then I read the whole thing through for consistency/clarity before I hit send.
I almost never proofread or edit my Friday Dispatches. Ahhhhh!!!!!
What are you generally interested in writing about?
I’m never not writing about writing (obnoxious). But I’m also often not writing about writing! Uhh. Okay. Wait a sec. What am I generally interested in writing about? Novels, shoes, hair, makeup, poetry, time, psychological trickery, weird curiosities, travel and silly things. What do I end up writing about? All that, plus: crock pot recipes, movies I’ve seen, sweaters I’ve coveted and abandoned in my online cart.
When I started this newsletter, around ½ or maybe even ⅔ of the posts were about poetry. That was before I published my first book of poems! After teaching some poetry workshops, I was operating in an instructional mode, and I was spending a lot of time coming up with prompts to generate new poems, or reverse-engineering existing poems (my own and others’) into recipes. The newsletter was really intended for people who wanted to write poetry but were scared.
Now, my readers are a hodgepodge of people who know all different facets of my writing. I’ve got Poetry People, Fiction People, Essay/Nonfiction People, and of course friends/colleagues/peers in the writing world. People who, somehow, found this newsletter via my lifestyle writing. Or my comedy!
Right now I’m working on a new longform, ongoing poetry project (you’ll see it SOON, I SWEAR). I’m midway through revisions on my first feature film script, which I’m going to be sharing more broadly this year. I am, of course, still plugging away at my novel. And I’m headed back to the stage soon, in a new sketch show, and with some more parody music stuff! More on that Friday (!!!!!).
I’m interested in writing about all the [insert nouns] which make the poetry/novel/essays/screenplays/music possible. That’s what I’ll say.
Who are you writing for?
Scholars of any stripe with ambition and clown blood. Poets, recovering poets, aspiring poets, people who narrowly missed becoming poets. Everyone who looks better with bangs. Those who swear by physical planners but eschew the tyranny of chore charts. All of us who felt like impostors when reading Into the Gloss. My fiancé, who always knows which of my jokes I like the best. Annoying theatre kids who go to karaoke still in costume. People who are nosy about the lives of artists and hate performing the Memoir Slog so they choose to float suspended in the mystery. Parker Posey!!!! Girls I went to summer camp with and haven’t spoken to since. Sentient slices of funfetti cake. The extremely glamorous Upper West Side ladies working at a particular soup-of-the-day deli I like. Etsy sellers who make perfume oils. My dad, who, regardless of how good I think my writing is, can usually quote it back to me.
What’s your favorite post on your blog?
The aforementioned asthma post, which is good because I thought about it nonstop for the months immediately following my diagnosis. I was scared that writing it would somehow magic my chest pain back into existence. It includes this, I’m sorry, fucking stellar set of paragraphs:
Sometimes, my pain felt more like shame. It was a dirty secret I was keeping. How was I supposed to bring any of this up in conversation? It’s been a couple of months since I last saw you, things are going well except for the constant throbbing ache that takes up half my torso, I have been so busy at work but got really into collage. I wrote about it only briefly – I mentioned it in another essay, and I wrote one poem about it. The pain escapes my writing. My anguish is not a metaphor for something else. The pain is only pain.
The longer it sat within me, the more reluctant I was to acknowledge it in mixed company. Many people offered well-meaning suggestions that didn’t work, and the fact that they didn’t work made me feel stupid. Over time, I began to believe that I didn’t deserve relief – I had contributed to the circumstances that left me scarred, so I could not expect to ever get better. I kept taking ibuprofen and Advil, grimacing through sex and karaoke, and hoping I would someday be punished enough.
If you’re looking for something with a more palatable Jesus Christ factor, there’s this poetry prompt based on a Far Side comic panel, or a story about my cursed Air BnB writing-retreat experience. There’s a whole section dedicated to my favorite posts, if you’d like to see them!
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
Funny you should ask. As of today, I’m re-branding! Henceforth, this newsletter will be known as “Craft Supplies.” The reasons are threefold:
I want to increase the discoverability of this blog across the Substack network and the internet at large. “Hattie Jean Hayes” is only a descriptive name to people who know who Hattie Jean Hayes is! “Craft Supplies,” on the other hand, provides potential new readers with a vague idea of What This Is All About. And what, exactly, is this all about?
I want to narrow the focus of this newsletter a bit, to spotlight, as I said before, “all the [insert nouns] which make the poetry/novel/essays/screenplays/music possible.” Those [insert nouns] could be books I’ve read, musicals I’ve seen, road trips or sleepovers or solo treks to the art museum. Lipsticks I’ve known and loved! Writing desks I’ve sought out, day jobs I’ve grown to despise. Beyond my own work, I hope that these topics can serve as inspiration for my readers’ poems/paintings/essays/short films/paper dolls/doodles/monologues/whatever their craft is. And I like the somewhat casual tone of the word “craft” in that context, the way it reminds us that this is supposed to be fun even when we take it seriously.
New name “craft supplies” make you think of glitter and stickers :) get it :) nice. Pretty!!!
And that completes the questionnaire! Thank you for reading, and please, if you have comments/feedback on the name Craft Supplies (by Hattie Jean Hayes!), let me know.
If not, well: see you Friday!
